


Still Life With Potstickers and Welding Torch: or, Tony Stark at Rest

by melannen



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Fanart, Gen, M/M, Painting, future shock, sleepy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-12
Updated: 2011-11-12
Packaged: 2017-10-25 23:28:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,332
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/276030
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/melannen/pseuds/melannen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve is picking up 21st Century art techniques quickly. Tony is impressed. Pepper is amused.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Still Life With Potstickers and Welding Torch: or, Tony Stark at Rest

**Author's Note:**

> So, um, Captain America fandom, like White Collar fandom and a few others, is a fandom that makes me want to make art. _Unlike_ in White Collar fandom, though, I don't have to match the skill of a once-in-a-century artistic genius, I only have to be able to kind of pass as a very out-of-practice, out-of-date and never fully trained illustrator, which is slightly more doable.
> 
> Which is only to say that I keep starting fanart pieces which I end up signing with 'S.Rogers' instead of my initials...
> 
> And as I was working on one piece I came up with a deleted-scene bit that tells the story of when Steve painted this, and since I know fandom well enough to know that a picture plus 1000 words gets _lots_ more feedback than just a picture, you get fanart _and_ fluffy ficlet, yay.

So much in this new century is different, but somehow what hits Steve particularly hard is the art. He'd always thought he'd end up as an illustrator someday - drawing is all he was good it - but now, when he looks at all the art around him (and there's _so much_ of it; murals on the walls, posters on the sides of buses, even art prints on the _T-shirts_ that everyone wore out now,) he can't even figure out the techniques they used to make it. He can still buy a _Batman_ comic (and reassuringly Bruce Wayne hasn't aged any more than he has), but instead of the plain four-color cartoon of his day, even the comics are better than even the printing in the slick magazines was in his day, and it's all rendered in bright, mathematically smooth washes of color that even oil paint couldn't manage.

He finally asks Tony about 21st century art, because Tony _said_ he could ask, and Tony offers to set him up with everything he'll need to do digital art. "I mostly use it for design," he says, "so all the best stuff's down in my workshop, but you can use the same tools for painting, too, sure, probably."

So they bring their supper down the stairs one quiet evening after a long day, and after they've eaten, Tony gives him the tools of an artist in this new world: a tablet which he can draw on without actually drawing, and a stylus that can be a pen, and a pencil, and a dozen different brushes, if he presses the right buttons. He shows him how to use the "holographic" screens that let his images hang in the air in front of him (and then shows him how to use one of the small, glass-covered screens that are a tiny bit more familiar), and the "programs" that let him create an image on the screen that he can save for later or turn into prints.

The art programs are a little more complicated than the basic communications tools that he was taught to use at SHIELD, but after an hour or so of Tony leaning over his shoulders and pointing things out to him, he's managed to paint a baseball that's at least recognizable as a baseball. He's confident enough that he can learn the rest on his own to shoo Tony away when he tries to tell Steve that he has a full 3D modeling program that could do a simple shape like a sphere in perfect detail and feed right into the rapid prototyper to create a working 3D version.

Steve doesn't tell him that he's missing the point; he's pretty sure Tony already knows, Tony just always needs to be saying _something_ , pushing, moving, so Steve tells him to go work on one of his own projects, Steve will be all right.

He gets so absorbed in learning the new skill that he quickly loses track of what Tony is doing after that. The tools of an artist may have changed, just like everything else has, but the _language_ of art is still the same, and that's reassuring, when the language of _language_ is different enough that he only understands half of what Tony says on a good day.

Even with his rudimentary skill with the stylus and rusty talent, painting on a computer is amazing: he never has to worry about running out of paint, or when he'll have enough money to buy more; he can be as profligate as he likes. And he can make all sorts of mistakes, too, and then erase them or cover them up without any sign they were ever there. And JARVIS shows him how to use something called "google image search" which is an index of pretty much every image or object ever created in history, the world's largest morgue, if he needs a reference for anything he's drawing. If this is the way the future works, he's starting to think he might understand Tony a little.

Eventually he realizes that he hasn't heard anything for some time except for the scratch of his stylus and the near-inaudible hum of machinery that seems to be a constant in this future, and he looks across the workshop to see Tony leaning heavily on a table, still in a way that Steve's never seen him be still before. Steve quietly puts down his own work and walks over; Tony doesn't react, and Steve sees that he's fallen asleep right there, sitting up. He should probably wake Tony up and get them both to proper bedrooms - the little clock on the corner of the screen, now that he thinks to check it, shows that it's somehow gone 2 AM without his noticing - but instead he asks JARVIS if he can dim the lights in the shop, and keeps working just by the glow of the screen he's painting on.

****

A few days after the night Tony, embarrassingly, forgot that he'd offered to help Captain America out, and crashed in his lab as usual without even remembering he had a guest (something Tony is never going to live down in his own memory even if Cap's been nice enough not to say anything about it), the man himself comes up to Tony and says, "I just wanted to thank you for all the time you've given to helping me. I don't have much I can give you in return, but, um, here, JARVIS showed me how to print it out," and shoves a framed picture into Tony's hands.

It's a painting of Tony, fallen asleep at a table in his lab. The lab is darkened, and the scene is lit just by the glow of his arc reactor, which outlines everything in a nimbus of blue. The painting itself is kind of rough, but there's clear talent behind it, and Tony kind of likes it; then he sees the signature in the corner - S. Rog - and realizes that Steve himself painted it, and when.

"Were you _watching me sleep_?" Tony asks with a smirk, and Captain America honest-to-god blushes.

"I've been wanting to draw you for awhile," he says, "I've at least sketched everyone else on the team, but that was the first time I saw you sitting still long enough for me to even try."

"Well, fair enough," Tony says, "It's good. I like it. Getting used to the digital age, huh?"

Cap shrugs. "I still like pencil and paper best, but, well, computer art just seemed like the right medium for you," and rubs awkwardly at his neck.

Because Tony is secretly a sap, and also has had a mancrush on Captain America since he was about six, he hangs the framed portrait in one of his offices, among a collection of diplomas and awards. Nobody seems to notice it until the day Pepper comes in and takes the time to study it carefully. "Sleeping with an artist now, Tony? Do I get to find out before the tabloids do? 'A Woman Asleep At Table' - nice. Snide, yet sympathetic. I think I like her."

It takes Tony less than five seconds to run a search on "A Woman Asleep At Table" - a Vermeer painting, 16th century, and Cap had very obviously used it as the reference for his own composition. It takes him another few seconds to read the [Wikipedia article about the Vermeer painting](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Girl_Asleep_\(Vermeer\)) and its apparently transparent symbolism of sex and drunkenness, promiscuity and post-coital intimacy.

"I especially like the way she replaced the fruit of forbidden passion with half-eaten potstickers," Pepper says. "It's very you."

"Wow," Tony says. "Pepper, make a note: Captain America is secretly _devious_."

" _Cap_ painted that?" Pepper asks, and Tony raises his hands and sits back.

"I swear to you, I am not dating Captain America," he says.

"Yeah?" Pepper asks, raising her eyebrows, with another glance at the portrait. "Well, you might want to make sure he knows that."

  



End file.
